


into temptation

by byronicmaiden



Category: Outlast (Video Games)
Genre: 1990s, Abusive Parents, Biblical Themes (Abrahamic Religions), Canonical Character Death, Catholicism, Character Death, Character Study, F/M, Gen, Grooming, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Middle School, Murkoff Corporation, Pregnancy, Religious Guilt, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Teen Pregnancy, and i needed a place to vent about all this, if any of you even think about sexualizing this i will stomp you to death with my hooves, this is based off my real life experiences and my memories and my intrusive thoughts, vent - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:14:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26367031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/byronicmaiden/pseuds/byronicmaiden
Summary: but deliver us from evil–a character study examining how loutermilch began abusing jessica, and what happened between then and her death.
Relationships: Jessica Gray/Blake Langermann
Comments: 6
Kudos: 14





	into temptation

Jessica preferred to sit at the back of the classroom. She wasn’t antisocial; the world was just quieter back there. No one bothered her. But no one saw her either. She felt very much like a ghost lost in a maze, ever since her mothers suicide. _Mommy got sad. Mommy is home with the angels._ Part of her couldn’t believe that was true. It all felt like numb medicine pumped into her veins.

She thought the new priest was nice. He was strict, and he wasn’t exactly how she thought a music teacher ought to be– she secretly liked to listen to that ‘Devil music’ everyone warned her to stay away from– but he was nice to her. He said she had a beautiful singing voice, that she could be a professional singer, spreading the word of God with her music. She just laughed, but he didn’t. He was serious. He said he could train her voice, shape it into something beautiful– but only with proper teaching. Private teaching.

It was at one of these lessons when she first realized he was strange. Just slightly off. He didn’t like her joking with him, he didn’t want her wasting time. He said she had so much potential, she just needed to focus. Focus on him. And their music.

She almost liked messing with him, teasing him, seeing if she could get a rise out of him. Messing with people always made her giggle. They sat, side by side on the piano bench, and she kept creeping closer, leaned her head on his shoulder. He pushed her off, gently the first two times, but when she turned her body towards him, put her chin on his shoulder and breathed into the hollow of his neck, he jerked and grabbed her by the wrist, forcing her to sit up straight. She saw something almost scary in his eyes, like a monster.

“You need to stop that,” he said, his teeth clenched tightly.

Jessica just blinked at him, swallowed hard. “I’m sorry,” she said. Suddenly breathing heavily, he looked down and dropped her wrist like she’d burnt him. Like she was unholy ground.

“We’ll finish this lesson tomorrow,” he said, standing up and turning his back to her. “You should go home and pray. You need it.”

She felt so dirty when he said that, when he dropped her wrist and looked at her with so much anger. It was just like how her father looked at her.

She didn’t want him to look at her like that.

She stopped messing with him. She stopped disobeying him, she sat up straight and raised her hand in class, she didn’t pass notes with Blake or Lynn. She was on time to all their lessons. She did what he wanted.

* * *

“You can’t get married, right?” she asked abruptly, in the midst of one lesson, as he shifted through a stack of worksheets on his desk.

He looked up at her as she walked to the desk, smiling as sweet as she could, curious.

“The vow I’ve taken prohibits marriage, yes. But I made the choice to take that vow,” he explained.

“Why?” she asked.

“I didn’t write the rules,” he said.

She narrowed her eyes playfully, half-sat on his desk. He leaned away as she did, pushing his chair back.

“So you’ve never had like, a girlfriend?” she asked, smiling.

He worked his jaw and looked down, then back to her. “Not since I was a young man, no.”

She giggled and he raised his eyebrows.

“Something funny about that?” His tone turned harsher.

“No, no. I’m sorry. I just– I don’t know. I guess ladies are missing out. You’re cute.”

He narrowed his eyes at her, and she looked down, like she’d done something sinful. She hadn’t, had she? She was just being polite. She complimented him. How could that make him angry? It was just like with her father, just like how he was when she–

“You really shouldn’t say things like that, Jessica.”

She pressed her lips together. “Why not?”

He exhaled and rose from his seat. “It’s not appropriate. Someone might take your compliments the wrong way. You could make a man behave very...sinfully. You should learn to control yourself more.”

The feeling of filth washed over her again. No amount of holy water could make her feel clean.

* * *

It was after school, in the low light of the music room, a halo of fluorescents shining down on them, when he first touched her. Their fingers kept brushing over the piano keyboard, just barely touching as they played their parts, and the music swelled inside of her like a balloon in her chest, sucking away all her breath, and the music feels like love, like love you can’t do anything about, like love that is not love at all because it is all-consuming and obsessive and hungry, a love you can’t run from because it will find you no matter how hard you try to hide.

He told her she was so beautiful and talented, and he’d wanted to do this for so long, she was teasing him and flirting with him and he knew she felt the same. He said she was so pretty and holy and clean. He said she was dirty and sinful and wicked. He said he was in love with her. He said she seduced him with her charms. It all faded into monotonous moaning.

* * *

He’d only touched her up until that night, in the girls bathroom, the one by the pool, the one that was perpetually wet and smelled like chlorine. He said he loved her so much, he couldn’t stop himself, he wanted to make her feel good and show her how much he loved her. He said he wanted to make her a woman, to help her understand these strange feelings she was having– how did he know she was feeling those things? _And what things?_

The tile was wet and cold beneath her, and she wished he’d done this in the music room, but someone might see up there, and they wouldn’t understand, they would try to get her in trouble and make her lie, and lying is a sin. Lying is a sin.

She just closes her eyes and looks at the lights and thinks about what Heaven looks like. She sees a ball of white light obliterating everything around her. She sees fire and wonders why it’s Hell that is always portrayed as burning, when fire is supposed to be so cleansing, or maybe that’s the point, maybe if you burn for so long you’ll finally be made clean. She just wants to be clean.

He told her to take a shower and wash the sin away. He told her to pray.

She sat on the tile floor and sobbed in the shower, the water so hot on her skin as she scrubbed herself raw and red, ripping at her flesh and scratching away like a molting bird, trying to tear away the feeling, and she hates herself so much, she feels like the most evil person in the world for letting this happen to her, for tempting this man and turning him to sin. The water is scalding and when she looks at the puddle swirling by her feet, going down the drain, she notices it is red. She is bleeding between her legs, and she feels like something is broken, something is wrong.

She sobs, screams, and he rushes into the room, shuts off the water and gathers her in his arms, shaking her, gentle at first, but when she won’t stop crying, he wraps a hand around her mouth and shushes her. Tells her it’s okay. Asks her what’s wrong.

“I’m bleeding– I’m bleeding, I’m going to die, what did you do, what did you do to me–“ she sobs, falling on the floor. He strokes her hair and hands her a towel, which she stains with her blood. He explains that this is normal. Everything they’re doing is normal. You’re supposed to bleed your first time. God has made you a woman.

She wonders if that’s what he told all his other ‘girlfriends’.

* * *

Her life devolved into hazy sleepwalking when she was alone. She didn’t like to be alone; she sunk deep into her thoughts, all those ugly thoughts calling her dirty and fallen and sinful. She was a sinner and she had done something wrong. She was being punished.

When she saw Blake or Lynn, she was pulled out of her sea of cloudy depression, and it was like nothing bad could happen to her. Lynn was so often in her own little world, but there was something so intriguing about Blake. She figured it was because he was a boy, and she wondered if all boys had thoughts like Father Loutermilch, if Blake wanted to do those dirty things with her. He must, right? If this was normal? She imagined herself doing those things with him, and it’s different, he is so sweet and gentle with her, just kissing and hugging her and never lying or saying mean, hurtful things. When will Blake start wanting to do that with her? Should she ask him? Should she ask if he’s done it with any other girls? Should she make the first move?

She thought about Blake with Lynn, and wondered if they’d ever done those things. She knew Blake liked her, liked Lynn because she was funny and smart and pretty, and Lynn had never done anything bad or sinful. She wondered if Blake could smell the stench of sin on her, the sweat and filth that she couldn’t remove, those hands that take and take so much from her but can never get enough, leaving red prints across her ivory skin, leaving bruises and drawing blood. She wondered if that was why Blake didn’t like her. Because she was ruined, she was all empty inside. What was the point, even? She was all used-up.

* * *

She was in the nurses office again. Another fake fever, another fake stomach ache, just anything to get her out of music class. She didn’t want to look at him– she knew that was wrong, she knew she was sinning by running from a man of God, a man chosen to spread His teachings who would never do anything wrong, so this mustn’t be wrong, but if it’s right, why does it hurt so much? Why does it make her feel so dirty and angry?

He looks at her in class, and his gaze makes her skin crawl, makes her stomach churn, and she feels like she’s going to faint, like the ground has been pulled out beneath her and she is falling so fast but no one hears her screaming. He calls on her when she isn’t raising her hand, he scolds her when she slumps in her seat and hides in her hair.

Eventually she learns to tune him out, make him go silent as he talks about music and God and whatever else. She isn’t in school anymore, she isn’t even in her body, she is somewhere far away, watching it happen, watching her life pass by.

Sometimes the bell will ring and yank her back into reality, and she looks down at her notebook to see it filled with scribbles of strange things: clawed hands pulling apart little legs, long tongues dripping with saliva, stick-figures with red splotches over their genitals, crosses with X’s through them. Words like _filth_ and _sin_ and _Father_ and _stop_. She wrips the paper out and crumples it, shoving it in her backpack where no one will see.

“You don’t have a fever, Jessica,” the nurse says, almost tossing the thermometer on her desk. “You can go lie down if you want, but I don’t think you’re sick enough to go home.”

The nurse had been nicer before, but she was seeing through her excuses. But Jessica wasn’t lying this time– she really did feel sick, like her stomach was shedding and churning, like a machine.

“Okay. Can I do that?” Jessica asked, shifting in the chair, looking at the ‘rate your pain’ chart hanging from a filing cabinet, and she hates the little cartoon faces that couldn’t possibly accurately represent how she feels, this all-consuming sickness that she can’t run from, this feeling of being so completely alone, feeling like she’s being pulled down into dark water and everyone is watching, everyone can see her claw at the surface, but no one does anything, because obviously she’s fine, she’s not drowning, she can still breathe.

The nurse nods, clicking at her keyboard, and Jessica goes into the little room in the back, shuts off the lights and closes the door, lies down on the cold plastic bed, the paper crinkling beneath her, like a hospital, and she thinks about how nice it would be wake up in the hospital, all safe and sound beneath layers of white sheets, behind cinderblock walls where no one can get to her. She imagines grabbing a pair of scissors and stabbing them into her hand in the middle of class, standing up and asking if she can go to the nurse now, if she can leave now, if her pain is visible enough yet, if people care yet. She falls asleep imagining blood spurting from her palms, collapsing as her classmates run to catch her, holding her like a dying saint.

* * *

She wakes in darkness and the nurse is shaking her, saying it’s time to get up, she’s been asleep for too long, but she just wants to be left alone and sleep forever, tucked safely away in a tower that no one can reach like Sleeping Beauty.

“Jessica, hun, you need to wake up. You slept all day. Father Loutermilch says it’s time for your music lesson.”

Her stomach lurches and she rolls over, shakes her head, stuck in a strange state of half-asleep, half-awake, like she’s underwater. She keeps coming back to water, to drowning.

“Jessica,” Father Loutermilch says, and it pulls her into reality, making her shiver. She pulls herself up and wipes her face, realizing that she’d been crying. His voice reverberates through her bones like he’s inside her, echoing through the corridors of her body and she can’t get him out. He’s like a demon no one can exorcize, filling her with evil, and no one would believe her if she said anything, because he is a man of God, everyone loves him, everyone respects him, and she is a sinner, tempted by the Devil to lie and spit on his name.

He walked her back to the music room in heavy silence, a hand on the small of her back, possessive and domineering like he owns her. He walks her inside and shuts the door, twisting the lock. She hears it click and flinches. It is a horrible sound.

“You weren’t in music class today, Jessica,” he says, making his way over to her, gesturing for her to sit on the piano bench.

“I didn’t feel well”, she says, her voice trembling.

“You shouldn’t lie to me, Jessica. _Thou shalt not lie_. Did you forget that?”

 _But you lie to everyone_ , she thinks, _you lie to them and make them think you’re a good man, a holy man, but you’re evil, you’re worse than the Devil, at least he doesn’t hide behind God,_ she thinks. But she doesn’t dare say it.

She shakes her head and says, “I’m not lying, I’m not. I just didn’t feel well. You–“

He raises his eyebrows and she regrets her words. “I what? What did I do?”

She presses her lips together and feels like she’s going to cry. “You made me hurt. When...when you...it made my stomach hurt. I think something is wrong.” Her voice wobbled, breaking as she started to sob.

Loutermilch took her face in his hand, forcing her to look at him. He looked into her eyes, not allowing her to look away. “Jessica, I need you to tell me something. This is very important, dear. I need you to tell me if you’ve bled yet.”

She blinks at him, thinking and wondering what he meant. Yes, she bled, he made her bleed when he did that to her in the locker room, but then she remembers the little bit of sex education she’s had. _He means my period_ , she thinks. She got hers earlier than most girls, and she had no one to explain anything when it happened, no one would talk about things like that. She had to steal a pack of pads from the CVS because her father wouldn’t give her any money.

There was anger in his eyes, mixed with fear. She’d never seen him afraid before.

“No,” she lied. “No, I haven’t.”

He looked relieved, exhaling heavily and slowly releasing his hold on her. “Good. That’s good to hear. I want you to tell me when you do, understand? I want to be the first person to hear about it.”

Jessica swallowed hard, nodding. “I understand.”

He kept looking at her, like he could smell the blood, like a dog sniffing for meat.

“When that happens, boys are going to look at you different. They won’t be able to control themselves around you...and it will be your job to save yourself for someone who truly loves you.” He blinked at her. “You know I love you, right, Jessica? I’m sharing my love with you. God wants me to show you how much I love you, and make you feel good.”

But this doesn’t feel good, she wants to say. It feels so ugly and dirty and it hurts, it hurts so much.

“But we–“ the words catch in her throat. “But we’re not married.”

She sees him thinking behind his eyes. “You know my vows forbid me from marriage. That’s why God sent you to me. So I could show you how much I love you, so I could help you become the beautiful young woman you’re meant to be. In Gods eyes, we’ve done nothing wrong.” He ran a hand across her face, wiping away her tears, holding her tightly.

She nods, and doesn’t say anything. He pulls her close and kisses her, and she hates herself for ever once finding this man attractive, for her stupid crush that spiraled into this because she knows this can’t be right, but she can’t quite deduce why. Because he says there’s nothing wrong with what they do, but if that’s the case, why is it such a secret? Why can’t she tell anyone?

* * *

She never let Blake see her acting sad. Blake seemed to have his own issues, always down on himself, always doubting his accomplishments. He didn’t need another burden. She just wanted to make him happy.

Class trips to the new computer lab were the only times Jessica had access to the Internet. She sent Blake messages when she wasn’t supposed to, chatting with him about things that didn’t matter, anything to take her mind off those bad thoughts. Thoughts that crept up on her in the middle of the night, when she was all alone with nothing to distract herself.

Her sleep schedule was getting worse. She was kept awake all night by her fear, her loathing, by the sickness that had grappled her recently and refused to leave. Violently ill in the morning, nauseous and tired all day, and no one believed her– they all just thought she was making things up. She cried herself to sleep, she dug her nails into her skin until she bled. She vomited everything she’d eaten that day, unable to keep anything down. She shook with nerves and terror until she finally passed out. Then she would be forced to wake up and return to school, to the place she wanted to escape more than anything.

At the computer, in the low, fuzzy light of the screen, she quickly typed _throwing up in the morning_ into the search bar, huddling close in attempt to block the screen.

Words popped up on screen, and she saw flashes of sentences, but one word kept showing up: _pregnant_. Her throat tightened. She clicked on an article titled _How To Know if You’re Pregnant_. She skimmed it quickly, then typed in _symptoms of pregnancy_. Morning sickness, fatigue, light bleeding, faintness. Her skin grew cold with sweat. She swallowed hard and looked at the blurry words on her screen. She felt as though her reality had been ripped from her, and she’d been thrust into a new one.

She heard the library door squeak, and she saw Blake approaching her out of the corner of her eye. Her hand rushed to grab the mouse and close the window, barely hiding it as he walked by. He returned to his computer. They resumed their chat.

* * *

When she told Father Loutermilch she’d lied about her period, he shook her so hard she thought her neck would snap. He grabbed her and growled at her, he just kept repeating _What? What are you saying?_

She sobbed as he held her tight enough to bruise, blubbering apologies and begging him not to be mad. His eyes burned with rage, and she saw hellfire in them, and he looked as evil as the Devil himself.

“I didn’t want you to be mad at me,” she cried. “You seemed so mad.”

* * *

It wasn’t hard to hide it from her father; he was rarely home, anyways. He barely even noticed her. She hid beneath layers of baggy clothes. Father Loutermilch gave her permission to wear a thick sweater over her uniform. He kept her away from prying eyes. He told her he would take care of it. _It._ Her baby.

She didn’t picture a child; she pictured a monster. A demon in her womb eating away at her, drinking her blood and poisoning her and she hates it. Hates him for putting this inside her.

What’s strange is, the pregnancy grows so quickly– quicker than she imagined possible. Or maybe she was just slowly disappearing into nothingness, losing whatever grip on reality she had.

She finds herself staring at the Virgin Mary statue, the one in the hallway, and she’s so angry, because how could God possibly think that was an acceptable thing to do to a little girl? What about what Mary wanted? Didn’t she matter? Or was she just a vessel for His word, a factory to pump out a messiah? She looks at the statue, and she cries, and she swears the blessed Madonna is crying with her. She imagines the Holy Mother taking her in her arms, telling her it’s okay, everything will be alright. But she knows that’s a lie.

It was in the middle of one of their lessons when she felt her head grow light. His voice was muffled as he called out to her, like she was slowly slipping underwater, and she tried to speak but no words would come out, just horrible wet choking sounds. She tried to stand up but her feet gave out beneath her, and she stumbled forward, falling into his arms as everything went black.

Conversing voices woke her up, and she realized she was in the locker room again, lying on the cold floor, a pain blossoming from her abdomen, more pain than she had ever felt, like her insides were burning and dying and trying to claw their way out of her body. She can’t move, she can’t lift her limbs, but she sees Loutermilch talking to another man, a man she’s never seen before, dressed in a white coat with combed hair, and he has a briefcase in his hand, with a strange symbol printed on the leather. _It looks like an M,_ she thinks, and then: _No, it looks like a pitchfork. It looks like Hell_.

The strange man is saying something to her, and she tries to talk but the words turn to dust in her mouth, her mouth is so dry she can’t speak, and he kneels down and suddenly he’s forcing her legs apart and she cries, begging for him to stop, but Father Loutermilch shushes her and assures her the doctor is going to help her. He grabs her by the ankles and when she tries to kick him, he lunges forward, and there’s something in his hand, and then a needle is in her neck, and then everything is blurring together like when you’ve just woken up and your head is thick with sleep, and it doesn’t feel like her body that’s expelling this wailing demon, she can’t feel anything as the sound of crying reverberates through the bathroom.

She lays slack-jawed, her eyes glassy and empty, like an overworked machine filled with too much ink, sputtering and shutting down. She can see the doctor take the mound of mottled red flesh in his hands, holding it with something resembling tenderness, and there is a slicing of flesh, and blood is everywhere, there is so much blood she’s certain she’s going to die, and the child is ripped away from her, and they’re both screaming and crying as she tries to sit up, tries to reach for her baby, but the man takes it away, and Loutermilch grabs her and pushes her down, puts a hand over her mouth and tells her to shut up. The baby will be fine. He’s going to a better place.

He. Her son. Her son who she would never meet, or name, or even hold. She would never see him grow up, she would never watch him become the person he was meant to be. She sobs, her throat going raw as Loutermilch presses down on her mouth with his hand, squeezing her so tight she can’t breathe. She goes limp and falls to the ground, and he drops her, abandons her like a broken toy that he doesn’t want anymore, stepping over her with disgust.

She can just barely hear him speak to the doctor, the doctor who stole her child. Loutermilch hands him an envelope, and then she hears him say something about a temple gate, and that he hopes the testament will take care of their new disciple. She doesn’t know if what she’s hearing is real or not. She doesn’t even care.

* * *

She liked the cold of the storage locker. The chill electrifies her, goes up her body and makes her feel numb, makes her almost feel clean again. She likes huddling in the dim room with Blake, stealing snacks and wandering aimlessly.

Blake is being strange about Lynn, he won’t talk about her, and she wants him to just admit he likes her, he likes Lynn so much more than Jessica. But they don’t touch, they don’t even really kiss, like that’s something forbidden, something they should never do, and that makes her feel so much worse about the things she’s done. If only he knew.

“So like, is she your girlfriend?” Jessica asks, delighting in the embarrassment on Blakes face. “Tell me, or else.”

“Or else what?” he asks.

She smiles and lunges at him, pinning him to the floor, holding him down by his wrists as he laughs in surprise, and she thinks, it feels so good to be the one in control, to be the one doing the hurting, and she wonders if this is why God is always punishing His children, because it feels so good to be the one to dole out punishment for once.

“I got you again,” she smirks triumphantly, laughing as his glasses slip down his nose.

“Okay, get off, get off me!” he cries out, still laughing.

“Not unless you answer,” she says.

“No!”

Blake is so different from Loutermilch, he is so sweet and easy to talk to, so understanding and gentle, and sitting on top of him doesn’t feel anything like when Loutermilch hurts her and makes her bleed and calls it love. It’s just a mockery of love, a perversion, she knows that now that she’s opened her heart to Blake and poured it into his palm, because this is what love feels like, so good and pure and kind like sunlight and warmth.

“Fine”, she folds her arms. “Then you have to give up. If you say I win, I’ll let you up.” It feels good to play God, to see Blake powerless beneath her, but she doesn’t want to hurt him, she just wants him to let her win, please, she just wants to win for once.

“Okay,” he groans, rolling his eyes.

“You have to say it,” she demands.

“You win! Okay?” he says.

She smiles and climbs off him, helping him up. “You’re such a pushover, Blake.”

Loutermilch would never let her get what she wanted that easily, he never cared about what she wanted, he never cared how she felt as long as he got his way, and he could just never get enough, he always needed more from her.

She takes Blakes hand and walks him out of the locker, through the empty cafeteria, that rotten food smell hitting them and then disappearing just as quick, and she leads him through the dark school, full of shadowy corners and blinding fluorescents, the snow outside bathing the whole place in a blue glow.

She’s imaging spending the night at Blakes house, with his parents who are always so nice to her, wrapped in blankets on his sectional sofa while the storm rages outside, and it’s just the two of them in the whole world and nothing on Earth or in Hell can tear them apart, it doesn’t matter because he will never let her go, he will never hurt her or let anything bad happen to her, he will always find her and save her. And she will finally get away from all this, from her father and her Father, she’ll leave this wretched town and have her own little apartment in the city, she’d get a job doing something quaint and quiet, maybe waitressing while she works on her music. She’ll ask Blake and Lynn to join the band she’s been imagining for months, she’ll dance to her Devil music all she wants and no one will punish her for anything anymore. She’ll get away, she’ll put all this in the past. She’ll find her son. She’ll raise him to know nothing but love and happiness. She’ll give him a name. She’ll love him just the way he is.

But then Father Loutermilch is stepping out of the music room, and oh no, she was so sure he’d be gone by now, she thought he would’ve given up, and he’s talking to Blake, she doesn’t want him to talk to Blake, she doesn’t want him to look at Blake and ruin him and put his dirty sinful disgusting filthy hands on him, because that’s what he is, he’s spent so long convincing her she was the sinner, she was the wicked seductress and he was a holy man swayed from the path of righteousness, but she knows it’s wrong, she knows it’s wrong when he looks at Blake the same way he looked at her, and she realizes now he never loved her, he was just a sick, lustful pervert who couldn’t control himself, and he would do the same things to Blake. The same things he did to her. All those lies he told her about how special she was, how God had chosen her– none of it was true. How many others had he fed those lies? How many more had he ruined?

Jessica grabs Blakes hand, pulls him into the music room, and Loutermilch is talking to them and she hates him so much, she just wants this to stop, and she knows he won’t do anything with Blake there to protect her, Blake will keep her safe, Blake will defend her. For once, someone will care, someone will see what’s happening and stop it.

But Blake slumps his shoulders and looks at the ground, then he’s leaving, _nonono why is he leaving, please Blake please come back please don’t leave me here to rot_.

And Loutermilch is pushing Blake out of the room, and Blake is backing away until he’s out the door, until Jessica can’t hold his hand anymore and she just hears his footsteps retreat, and her savior, her messiah has abandoned her, no one cares, no one notices, no one gives a damn about her.

Loutermilch tells her Blake is a bad influence, that Blake has confessed shameful secrets to him, that Blake doesn’t like Jessica like that because Blakes interest lies in other boys and he’s a sinner, he’s been tempted by the Devil and he’s going to pollute Jessica and ruin her. How ironic that he’s suddenly concerned about preserving her innocence.

He tells her he’s the only person who loves her, he’s the only one who should do those intimate things with her because he loves her. He loves her. God wants him to love her.

“God doesn’t want you to hurt me,” she says, so quietly she isn’t sure she even said it.

He blinks at her, so shocked that she’s talked back to him. “You don’t know what God wants. You don’t speak for Him.”

“Neither do you!” she says, her hands balling into fists. “God wouldn’t want you to make me feel like this! God wouldn’t want you to make me pregnant!”

There is so much rage in his eyes, rage at her for questioning him, for speaking out. “Are you forgetting Mary, mother of God? She was a young girl, just like you, and God loved her, so he chose her to carry his child.”

“But you’re not God!” she shouts, breathing heavily and crying, shaking with fear. He looks at her with so much disgust, like she’s just an insect he can squash, a sheep that’s strayed from the flock. An animal to be punished.

She turns around and tries to leave, but he grabs her by the wrist, and she screams, she finally screams, all that pain and rage floats from her throat and it’s the easiest thing she’s ever done, it’s like letting go of a rope you’ve been holding for so long, and your knuckles are white and your hands are red but you’ve finally let go.

He pulls her towards him, trying to grab her and touch her, trying to cover her mouth and shove up her skirt, and she kicks him in the shin and he drops her, and she runs past him through the other door, into the empty hallway, and Blake is on the other side of the school, he won’t be able to find her. She yells his name, but Loutermilch is walking towards her, his fists clenched as he tries to grab her, chasing her through the hall and she doesn’t look back, she doesn’t dare, she just keeps running and running and screaming and crying and the floor is so slick beneath her and her feet aren’t even on the ground and Loutermilch tries to grab her by the hair, by the dress, and he is shaking her and pulling her close, but she pushes him off, she wrings herself free from his grip, and Blake is coming, she’s going to be okay, she’s going to get away.

And then the ground is giving away beneath her, and her ankles are twisting and for a few brief seconds she could swear she’s weightless, she’s just falling free as water, nothing in the world can reach her, she is in a vacuum, a limbo between life and death and she realizes how quickly those two can merge into one.

And then she is falling, falling so fast, her body breaking on the stairs, tumbling down in such an ugly, uncoordinated way, she can’t even have a beautiful demise, her bones cracking with each step she hits, her neck snapping to one side, blood blossoming from her nose, her mouth, and she can’t hear anything, she can’t feel anything except for horrible, unbearable, never-ending pain, and for the first time in her life, she finally looks as destroyed as she feels.

And suddenly it all makes sense: this is happening because this is exactly what is supposed to happen, no one was ever going to notice, no one was ever going to catch her when she tumbled down those stairs. Blake walks through the stairway door, so hesitant and afraid, and his eyes fill with fear and panic as he takes her broken body in his arms, and she tries to lift her head to look at him, and he is holding her like one of those dying saints in an oil painting, her hair spread out like a halo, tears on her cheeks like a weeping Madonna, and she wants to tell him it’s okay. She wants to tell him it doesn’t hurt anymore. She wants to say she’s finally going home.

She hears Father Loutermilch say something, and she almost wishes she could crawl up those stairs and rip open his throat and make him bleed just like he did to her, but she’s so tired, she’s just so tired of holding on and fighting and staying alive, she can’t bring herself to hold on any longer.

Loutermilch steps over her like she’s discarded garbage and reaches for Blake, and she realizes he never once loved her when he ripped away her innocence and devoured her like unripe fruit and called her an evil whore, he was just spitting lies at her to make himself feel better. He’d tried so hard to convince her she was evil, but it was him, he was the sinner, he was no different than the Devil manipulating Eve and then blaming her for what he’d done. Forcing the apple into her mouth and then blaming her when she spits it back in his face.

Blake runs away, and she hears fighting and glass breaking and then a splash of water, and she’s thinking about drowning again, but it is peaceful this time. She’s thinking about floating downstream in a river, somewhere warm and sunny and filled with flowers, somewhere no one can touch her, and she finally feels clean. She sees her mother smiling at her. She feels the arms of Mother Mary around her, delivering her away from all this. She doesn’t know if it’s real. She figures at this point it doesn’t matter.

The light surrounds her, she can’t feel a single thing anymore, she can’t hear or see, and with the last bit of life left in her, she thinks of the only thing she can remember.

_Our father who art in heaven_

Her father can live his life without the daughter he never wanted. He can move away and start a new family, a better family.

_Hollowed be thy name  
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done_

Lynn and Blake will be happy now. They won’t be stuck with a third-wheel anymore. They can get married, they can live happily ever after, just like they were always meant to.

_On earth as it is in Heaven  
Give us this day our daily bread_

She doesn’t care what happens to Loutermilch in this life. She hopes, if God exists, if God cares, he will get what he deserves in the next.

_And forgive us our trespasses  
As we forgive those who trespass against us_

She will never see her son again. She will never watch him grow up or raise him how she wanted, she will never know his name. She hopes he’s happy, wherever he is, at the temple gate, whatever that means.

_And lead us not into temptation_

Her eyes roll back in her head and her body stop twitching. She sees blinding white light, sees it surround her and fill her with love, and soon the light will take her and the blue fluorescents will be the only light left in her eyes, and she doesn’t mind. She’s ready to go.

_But deliver us from evil_

The pain is gone. She is going home. She is going to be with Mommy and the angels.

_Amen_

**Author's Note:**

> wow this is the longest one shot i’ve ever written. outlast 2 hit me in this very specific trauma place and it terrified me in a way nothing else has and i desperately needed a place to vent about my feelings. i kin jessica so much it’s not even funny and i needed to express how she/i felt. i hope there’s other trauma survivors out there who can relate to this and maybe it can help them make peace with what happened. okay, onto the elephant in the room: the baby. yes, the baby is val. loutermilch gave her to a murkoff doctor, who then deposited her in temple gate, and we know what happens to her after that. i went with the headcanon that val is a trans woman, assigned male at birth, so that’s why jessica refers to her as her son. i’d love to talk more about the jessica-is-val’s-mother theory if anyone wants to hear!!


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